CITY MANAGER CONTRACT QUESTIONED

Jackie Fenaroli does not have a personal beef with Murrieta City Manager Rick Dudley.

His contract, she says, is the problem.

In November 2010, Murrieta voters approved Measure E, which had wording that capped the city manager’s pay at 2.5 times the median household income of residents of the city.

But when Dudley received a favorable job review last year, which automatically continued his contract at his current level of salary and benefits, the City Council did not adhere to the formula set forth in Measure E — which would have capped his compensation at $202,290, based on the 2010 U.S. Census-determined median household income of $80,916 for the city.

Instead, Dudley’s salary and benefits package costs the city about $273,000.

The voter-approved mandate prompted much debate by the council before its members adopted an ordinance in 2011 in response to Measure E’s passage, but extensively reworked its provisions.

In the end, the council determined it still had the power to set the city manager’s salary, and was not bound by the 2.5-times-median-income formula.

Mayor Rick Gibbs has said in the past that the city manager position requires specialized knowledge and experience, and that Dudley’s pay ranked in the bottom one-third of city managers in California cities of comparable size, between 75,000 and 125,000 people.

The ordinance lists the standard of “2.5 times the median family income” as a factor to be “considered,” but does not make it a constraining factor in setting the salary.

Fenaroli, 51, has started an online petition at
www.change.org to limit Dudley’s pay to the formula established in Measure E. At last week’s council meeting, during a public comment session, she outlined her arguments for an ethics complaint against the city. All of which, she said, she spelled out in a letter to City Attorney Leslie Devaney.

Fenaroli subsequently learned through Devaney that the ethics code — or code of conduct, as the Murrieta City Council is considering referring to it in the future — that was being discussed at last week’s meeting was for council members to apply to each other.

“It really is a code of conduct amongst council members,” Devaney said.

But Devaney said that Fenaroli’s comments were not completely for naught. Her cause could be taken up by one council member against the others. In this case, that is a possibility, because council newcomer Harry Ramos was not part of the five-member body when Dudley was given the favorable job review, triggering his continued employment for another year.

According to Devaney, Fenaroli also has the option to take her case before the Fair Political Practices Commission, or straight to the Riverside County district attorney. Fenaroli said she is weighing those options.

“As a citizen, you grow up believing in the benevolence of the government,” Fenaroli said. “But you realize after a while that the government’s not so benevolent. And it’s only the citizens’ activism and policing that keeps them in their place.”

Fenaroli said her activism was spurred by a couple of disputes she and her husband, Donald, had with Riverside County over a family-owned mobile-home park and a parcel of land they owned in La Cresta.